


Only the Beginning

by kateandtheuniverse



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode 4, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Yaz's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateandtheuniverse/pseuds/kateandtheuniverse
Summary: There is a fascination she has with the Doctor that Yaz doesn't quite understand yet. But she is sure that she hasn't had enough of it just yet.





	Only the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This goes out to everybody who, like me, has always had a 'fascination' with certain people around them but were too oblivious to recognise it as what it was.

Home, they were finally home. Yaz had never been so glad to see the ugly concrete front of Park Hill buildings towering in front of her against the somewhat muddy morning sky. Her heart made skipped giddily as she took in the familiar image of her flat windows up on the highest floor. As much fun as she had had, travelling with Ryan, Graham and the Doctor, seeing space, witnessing history and grazing death more than a couple of times - she was glad to have Sheffield ground beneath her feet again for now. As the Doctor explained that much less time than they anticipated had passed since their leaving, Yaz observed her face grow more wistful with every passing second. Her hand started nervously playing with the framing of the TARDIS door as Graham and Ryan exchanged words of thanks and goodbye and Yaz's feeling of giddy excitement about being home started to fade rapidly.

 _This is goodbye,_ she thought, _this_ _is the last time I'm gonna see her._

And the impact of this thought hit her harder than she thought it would. Of course she had known that her time with the Doctor would be limited. Of course she had known that once they were safely back at Sheffield, there was no reason for the Doctor to stick around anymore.

Yet somehow she had pushed this thought off as they had stumbled through several adventures together, told herself that the Doctor liked having them around and wasn't just taking them along because she had no choice - somehow Yaz had even occasionally hoped that maybe the TARDIS would bring them somewhere else before landing them back at Sheffield. Back to their ordinary lives. The Doctor looked at her for a second, mouth twisting into a sad smile and Yaz felt a twist in her gut.

"What are you gonna do now?", she asked quickly, half actually curious, half desperately trying to prolong the conversation with the Doctor.

"Oh, you know, back in the box. There's loads to see."

Despite the fact that this was definitely an understatement, the Doctor seemed only mildly excited about the prospect of travelling the universe with an actual time machine.

"By yourself?", Yaz heard herself blurt out the next question. The Doctor looked even more melancholy than before.

"Yeah, I s'pose..." There was a pause and Yaz frantically tried to think of something else she could ask or say, so the Doctor wouldn't enter the TARDIS and disappear from their lives for good. There really was only one choice, seeing as they stood right in front of her building and it had been a long time since any of them had had a proper meal.

"Do you wanna come for tea at mine?" It only took the Doctor a nanosecond to answer.

" _Definitely_. Yes, I would! Thanks, I love tea. Tea at Yaz's. Amazin'."

Yaz turned towards the complex of flats and grinned to herself. She was completely enamoured by the way the Doctor talked a hundred miles an hour and got overly enthusiasted about completely mundane things. She couldn't believe an actual alien from another planet who had surely seen so many things in so many different places - and times - could be so excited about getting invited for tea.

"Are you coming? Are we all going for tea at Yaz's?"

This was directed at Ryan and Graham who still stood somewhat awkwardly next to the Tardis.

"She didn't invite us." Yaz felt ever so slightly sheepish that she had forgotten to ask them over the excitement about the Doctor vehemently taking her invitation. _The_ _Doctor is coming to my flat to have tea_ , had been blocking out any other thoughts for a moment and quickened her heartbeat. And she had to admit that there was a split second in which she was almost, just the tiniest bit, disappointed that the Doctor wanted to have Ryan and Graham with them as well. She immediately pushed this thought aside and innerly scolded herself for being so rude. She _loved_ spending time with Ryan and Graham, she'd grown really fond of them over the last couple of adventurous days and she would never _not_ ask them to join her for tea. After all they had become a great team.

"Don't be daft, 'course you're invited."

* * *

The Doctor was _in her flat_. Admiring the fact that it was a flat and mentally furnishing her own one with a purple sofa. Yaz was beyond glad that she seemed oblivious to the fact that her family was entirely embarrassing, including snarky remarks from her sister and her dad rambling on about his weird junk-conspiracy. Although the latter had definitely seemed to catch the Doctor's attention. But before she could wonder why exactly anyone would be interested in a conspiracy about junk, even if that someone was the Doctor, her mobile rang with her mum's number.

The conversation caused an uneasy feeling to spread in Yaz's stomach, a feeling she recognised well. The feeling that she usually had when something dangerous was lurking in the distance, an intuition which made her at least a halfway decent police officer.

"Is she alright?", her dad asked half-heartedly as he put some more snacks on the table where Ryan and her sister were sitting.

"Yeah, she forgot something", Yaz lied, "asked if I'd drop it at work for her."

She grabbed her keys and turned around to see the Doctor giving her a questioning look.

"She's got a new job - posh hotel opening. Do you mind if I nip out quickly?", she asked, feeling the need to apologise for leaving her guests alone so shortly after having invited them. The Doctor's expression changed to an almost concerned one.

"Need any company?", she asked promptly and sent a small jolt of panic through Yaz's body. Completely alone with the Doctor in a car to pick up her mother? There were several things that could definitely only go wrong in this scenario. Keeping her composure, Yaz shook her head.

"Nah, I'll be fine." But the fact that the Doctor had immediately offered to come along with her made her heart beat slightly faster. Her family definitely was very unhelpful. Her dad pointing out again that she never brought any friends home and her sister making digs at her about her job reminded her that she hadn't missed this aspect of her family at all during her stint in space. She had missed her dad's terrible pakorey just a tiny bit though.

* * *

As soon as she stepped into the hotel, she wished she had accepted the Doctor's offer to accompany her. The sense of foreboding hadn't dissipated on the way, if anything, it had intensified. When the two men, one of which was sporting a gun, ran towards her and her mum, she felt confirmation that once again her instincts had been right. The particularly strange specimen of business man who owned the hotel had undoubtedly taken one too many golfballs or other to the head, an impression further confirmed when he started talking about scheduled bathroom breaks as though they weren't surrounded by abnormally large spider webs that in no way could have appeared over night. Yaz found that the time spent onboard the Tardis had provided her with a new set of instincts. She decided that she had acquired the skill to distinguish between ordinary strange things that she was able to handle by herself and the other kind of strange occurrences that required help from someone who had more expertise in dealing with this sort of thing, more exactly, the Doctor. And giant spiderwebs combined with ominous crackling and chewing noises coming from _inside_ the walls of a newly built luxury hotel most definitely fell into the latter category. As if the Doctor had somehow read her thoughts from afar, she called on her mum's phone, asking Yaz to let her into the hotel.

 _The Doctor is here._  

Yaz wondered if there would be a point in the near future where her thoughts wouldn't immediately switch to autopilot, unnecessarily commenting everything the Doctor did as soon as she started interacting with her or the people arround her.

_The Doctor is here. The Doctor is hugging your mum. The Doctor called you an awesome human. The Doctor is touching your arm..._

She told her brain to zip it while they were running towards the racket upstairs. Of course, the weird business guy had something to do with the disruption. The Doctor had taken charge and told the American something about being an inspector of some sort before advising him to stay with the rest of them in the hallway. Then she took off towards the bathroom that allegedly harboured a human-kidnapping spider.

Despite this horrid prospect, Yaz immediately followed suit, not even questioning if the Doctor needed or wanted her to come along - she had no impulse control when it came to spending time with this woman, this incredible person.

Yaz still couldn't quite pinpoint what it was exactly that was so fascinating about her or why she constantly felt the need to get her approval and spend time with her as much as she could. She felt like she wanted to have deep conversations about _anything_ basically and to know everything about the Doctor's life and her travels and why she responded so strongly to some things and seemingly not at all to others. If she thought about it, she wanted to become the Doctor's best friend.

 _Or_ _even_ _more..._  

She caught herself thinking this last thought exactly as the Doctor was hanging upside down the opening that the exploded bathtub had left.

 _Get it together Yaz_ , she told herself, _you're in actual danger and all you can think about is..._

In that moment, the Doctor's head reemerged from the hole in the floor.

"Did you see it?"

"Really close."

And they ran.

* * *

They followed her mum to the exit and then to the kitchen where they regrouped.

The Doctor had a plan.

She seemed to always have one ready for whatever impossible situation they had gotten themselves into and right now it seemed unimaginable to Yaz that she would ever run out of plans. The American continued to confirm her feeling that he wasn't all there and she sincerely hoped that he wouldn't eventually interfere with their plan of solving the spider problem efficiently.

And her mum was getting impatient.

She couldn't even hold anything against her, she had asked Yaz to pick her up from work and Yaz had appeared with a bunch of strangers one of which definitely wasn't your average human being, even if you didn't take into account that she wasn't really a human being to begin with.

"Are you two seeing each other?"

She'd almost expected this question to pop up at some point. Ever since she'd told her mother in a weak moment that she'd much rather be dating a woman because women were just that much less complicated than men, this question was popping up regularly and in the most uncalled-for situations - such as this one definitely was.

Dating _the_ _Doctor_?!

Yaz's heart indignantly missed a beat. How did her mum dare bring this up right then and anyways, she didn't even know if the Doctor was even thinking about anything like that...

"I don't think so... Are we?"

The Doctor's confusion was real and Yaz who felt embarrassment hotly rising to her cheeks, angrily turned to face her mother.

"We're friends!"

And then she thought for a second about what exactly her relationship with the Doctor entailed.

"I owe the Doctor my life. Quite a few times or other."

"What's that even supposed to mean?"

"Can we not have this conversation now?"

Yaz couldn't believe her mother was being like this. Although she almost appreciated that she would have exhibited the exact same behaviour had the Doctor been a man, but nonetheless it was quite inconvenient to have her mum be this nosy and inquisitive in the middle of a mutant spider crisis.

On the way down to the cellar, Yaz couldn't help but notice that the Doctor seemed to once again mainly talk to her. Was she just not in the mood to talk to people she didn't know?

That was probably it.

And she would have told the 'Nice work, Yaz', she gave her when she turned on the lights in the old mining tunnel to anyone who had managed it.

Nothing special.

* * *

She was so incredibly smart. Watching the Doctor draw conclusions and formulate plans and actually see them carried to action made Yaz marvel. This was the fourth time she was witnessing the Doctor taking charge and dealing with things and honestly, it would never grow old.

And there were lessons to be learned. Things that she knew were the right thing to do but never really knew how to convey to other people.

The Doctor knew.

The Doctor put them into one wonderfully concise punchlines that should have been so easy to understand yet somehow there always seemed to be people who were blind and deaf to moral, who thought that getting their own way was more important than opening up to new possibilities.

This bitter thought accompanied Yaz as she approached the Doctor who was standing next to the dead spider mother, slumped body and lowered head.

"I'm sorry", she murmured and softly put her hand on the other woman's shoulder.

"I'm just sick of it", she heard the Doctor mumble through gritted teeth, "sick of all this senseless killin'."

Yaz wondered how many times the Doctor must have witnessed scenes like this one to sound so tired and defeated. She tightened the grip on her shoulder and they just stood there for a moment, not saying anything.

On the way back from the hotel, nobody really felt like talking. Despite resolving the spider problem, the adventure had ended on an unsatisfactory note. Yaz felt the anger burning inside her quietly, demanding justice, but there was something else.

A somber, numbing feeling around her heart as she thought about the events of this day, this last day she would ever spend with the Doctor. She had wished for something grand, something happy and marvellous, something that would leave them with only fond memories of their time together. A cheesy quote she had once received on a card attached to a goodbye present from a friend at the police academy popped into her head.

 _Every_ _ending is happy - if you're not happy, it's not the end._  

She knew exactly, what she would have to do. She let herself fall back to were Ryan and Graham were walking and started whispering her plan to them. They didn't want to stay here either, that she was certain of. They would meet tonight, not to say goodbye to the Doctor, but to ask her a question.

And when the evening came and she stepped outside her family flat to 'go to the shop', she felt completely sure of herself and her decision.

When she told the Doctor she wanted to come along and see the Universe, she felt even more certain.

And when she told the Doctor that she wanted to spend more time with her, because she was the best person she'd ever met, her heart started beating a little faster once more.

It was true.

She was ready.

She was sure.

Today wasn't the end.

It was only the beginning.


End file.
